The DEADLY Truth About The Dallas Air Show Crash!

Hey, it's Hoover! I've got a weekly letter for you on the patterns that keep killing pilots. Free → https://pilotdebrief.com/pattern On a clear November afternoon in 2022, a Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress and a Bell P-63F Kingcobra collided in front of thousands of spectators at the Commemorative Air Force's Wings Over Dallas air show. The Wings Over Dallas show at Dallas Executive Airport was meant to be a celebration of warbird heritage. Eight historic aircraft were airborne together under a Part 91 operation and an FAA air show certificate of waiver. The B-17G launched at 1310; the P-63F followed about five minutes later. Both crews were experienced. Both were flying inside altitude blocks that were supposed to keep bombers and fighters separated. In the final seconds before the collision, that separation broke down. The deconfliction plan relied heavily on real-time directives from the air boss and on the see-and-avoid principle — the same principle every pilot knows has hard limits when geometry, cockpit structure, and task saturation conspire against you. The fighter element converged on the bomber element from a direction where the B-17G's own structure obscured the threat, and where the P-63F pilot's workload and sight lines made the bomber nearly impossible to acquire in time. The NTSB's preliminary work focused on what was briefed, what wasn't, and how the air boss was managing aircraft that weren't part of a single approved maneuvers package. Investigators looked closely at the absence of a prebriefed separation plan tailored to mixed bomber-and-fighter elements, and at the broader question of how air bosses are trained, evaluated, and supervised. All five crew members aboard the B-17G and the solo pilot of the P-63F were killed. Both airplanes were destroyed. The NTSB found the probable cause was the air boss's and event organizer's lack of an adequate, prebriefed aircraft separation plan, with reliance on real-time deconfliction and see-and-avoid allowing the loss of separation; flight path geometry, structural obscuration, and the inherent limits of human visual scanning further degraded the crews' ability to detect each other, and the FAA's lack of guidance and recurrent oversight for air bosses contributed. The pattern here isn't unique to warbirds or to air shows. Any time a deconfliction plan leans on real-time calls and human eyeballs to catch what a written plan should have prevented, the system is one geometry change away from a midair. Dallas is a hard reminder that see-and-avoid is the last line of defense, not the first. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ JOIN THE DEBRIEF CREW ON PATREON Ad-free videos and exclusive analysis From $5/month:   / pilotdebrief   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ SOURCES NTSB Accident ID: CEN23MA034 Status: Preliminary Final Report: https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/P... Docket: https://data.ntsb.gov/Docket?ProjectI... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ABOUT PILOT DEBRIEF Pilot Debrief is hosted by Hoover, a retired F-15E pilot and current pilot for a major U.S. airline. Every video on this channel analyzes publicly released NTSB final reports, factual narratives, CVR/FDR transcripts, and docket evidence to extract practical safety lessons for general aviation pilots. We do not speculate beyond the evidence. We do not blame pilots for being human. We debrief the decisions and the systems, not the people. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Sponsorships and brand partnerships: [email protected] #PilotDebrief #NTSB #AviationSafety #Warbirds #MidairCollision